This section introduces aspects that may be helpful to facilitating a better understanding of the inventions. Accordingly, the statements of this section are to be read in this light. The statements of this section are not to be understood as admissions about what is in the prior art or what is not in the prior art.
The compactness and manufacturing cost of photonic integrated circuit (PIC) devices can be hampered by the need to optically couple components that have different heights on a mounting surface.